Thursday, November 6, 2014

New bookstore, Upshur Street Books, is now open!

The Room 11 family has gotten a bit bigger. A few months ago we wrote about a Kickstarter for a new bookstore, Upshur Street Books, from the folks behind Room 11, Petworth Citizen and Crane & Turtle. And now it's open!

The appropriately-named shop is located at 827 Upshur Street NW, next to Petworth Citizen. The shop was advertised as the first independent bookstore to open in DC in a decade, and it raised more than $20,000 of an original goal of $17,000, so folks were definitely excited by the idea.

The opened their doors on Nov. 1. I haven't been by yet but my friend really likes it and says it's "cute," which is a good thing for a bookstore to be described as. It looks like a nice spot and they plan to have events and readings shortly. Their selection ranges from literary fiction to graphic novels, kids' books, art books and more.

It's open Tuesday-Thursday noon to 8pm, Friday and Saturday noon to 9pm, Sunday 11am-7pm and closed Mondays. They have a website and are on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, so check them out.

It's always great to see small, local businesses opening, especially ones that people are excited about. A few years ago I wrote about needing a small, local independent bookstore in the What We're Missing series -- now we can scratch that one off the list.